a missing scene from Truce or Consequences
by samurai frasier crane
Summary: Here's Sam and Carla taking drunk Diane home, because the look on Sam's face when he says "You don't remember?" suggests that there was defffffffinitely something to remember.


Sam shifted Diane's weight over his shoulder as he started up the stairs, one hand on the railing to steady himself. Carla ducked under his arm and continued up, turning at the top to face him.

"Hey," she said. "I'll come with you. We can take my car, okay?"

He shrugged a shoulder, the one without a waitress slung over it. "Sure."

"I wouldn't want her to puke all over your Corvette."

Sam snorted. "What if she pukes all over your car?"

"No big deal," Carla said. "Lots of people have already done that. And that's why I'm bringin' you along, to clean it up."

"Sure thing, Carla."

When they reached her car she hesitated, fixing him with a lopsided half-grin. "I also wouldn't want you to wind up in jail."

"Huh?" It took him a moment to realize what she was insinuating. "Oh Jesus, Carla, shut up. My standards might not be too high—"

"They're getting lower every day.

"Well, they've at least gotta be conscious."

"Good to hear," she said, still grinning. "'Cos if they're not, you might go to jail."

"Thanks for the warning."

Before unlocking the doors, Carla popped open the trunk and gestured to it. "Well? Hurry up, make sure no one sees us."

Sam snorted again. "We didn't kill her."

"You don't even wanna pretend?"

"Open the doors."

"Geez, what happened to you, Malone?" She closed the trunk and unlocked the back seat. "You used to be fun."

"And I'm the one who's gonna go to jail…"

He slid Diane inside and clambered in after, fumbling for a moment before he managed to position her upright in the seat. "Geez, she's really out cold. Hey…" He ran his hand along the plastic seat cover, squinting. "Could you turn on a light? I can't find the seatbelt."

"I don't have a light," Carla said. "Or seatbelts... Or brakes."

"Oh." He glanced at Diane, crumpled over against the window. "Well, one of us should sit back here so she doesn't fall off the seat."

"You do it," Carla said, rolling her eyes. "This wouldn't be an issue if we put her in the trunk."

He reached out to close the door, looping his other arm around her waist and repositioning her so that her head lolled against his shoulder. A clump of hair fell across her face and hesitantly he pushed it behind her ear, letting his hand linger on the back of her neck. Her skin was so warm. He heard his breath catch in his throat and when Carla spoke it startled him; he had almost forgotten she was there.

"Jail, Sammy," she said, watching him from the driver's seat.

"Oh, shut up."

Sam could not tell for sure if Carla was just a bad driver, or if she was purposely veering and braking as abruptly as possible out of the distant hope that Diane might accidentally fly through the windshield. He tightened his grip around her. "Hey, uh, Carla," he said, after a moment had passed in silence. "What'd you mean when you said my standards are getting lower every day?"

They had reached a stoplight and she slammed on the brakes so violently that he almost collided into the back of her seat. He glared at her, but she made no acknowledgment of it, instead turning to fix him with a meaningful look.

"You know what I'm talkin' about, Sammy."

He glanced to Diane and back, thinking he might have an idea, but Carla was being annoying and he wasn't going to give her that satisfaction. "No, I don't."

"Would this help?" She thrust her nose in the air and spoke with an affected, haughty voice. "_You know to whom I am referring, Mr. Malone."_

He couldn't help laughing. "Hey, that was actually pretty good."

Carla turned back to the road. "Shut up. I'm serious, Sammy, you be careful with that one."

"What's that s'pposed to mean?"

"It means, she's not like your other floozies and I don't wanna see her sink her claws into you."

"Sink her claws into me?" he repeated, giving another snort. The suggestion struck him as absurd – that there could be any intent on her part. He was just trying to get her into bed, the way he tried to get all women into bed, and she was putting up more of a fight – so much of a fight, in fact, that he'd begun to wonder if his efforts had much of a point at all. But it wasn't something that warranted a lot of thought anyway, because it was just what he did with women. It almost always worked, and maybe it wouldn't this time, but that still wouldn't stop him from trying to soften her up; if anyone could be said to have claws, it sure wasn't her. "Gimme a break, she doesn't even like me."

"You really think?" Carla said skeptically. He felt a strange fluttering in his stomach at these words, compounded by the swerving car and how Diane's head drooped from his shoulder to his chest as the momentum threw them against the window.

"Jesus, would you stop doing that?" he snapped.

"Doing what? Are you even listening to me? She's screwing with you, Sammy. That's why she's holdin' out the way she is, so she can make you crazy and then you'll do whatever she wants."

"No, she's not." He repositioned her against him, momentarily losing his train of thought. "She's just puttin' up a fight. Anyway, you shouldn't be saying stuff like that right now."

"What, 'cos she's in the car? She's out cold. I'm just trying to warn you. I know what I'm talking about."

"You know more about women than me?"

"Of course I do, stupid, I am a woman – in case you forgot. But that's not what I meant." She cast him a sinister grin. "I know more about _evil._ I went to Catholic school. Hell, I married Nick Tortelli. She's playin' all the Tortelli cards."

"You think she's like Nick?" He laughed again and let his thumb trace along her arm, thinking what a ludicrous comparison it was. Nick was a complete slime, and she was… Well, he didn't know what she was. It was true that she wasn't much like any other woman he'd gone after, but that didn't mean she bore an iota of likeness to _Nick_. Could she really be messing with him? Despite Carla's earnest warnings, he felt himself swell with hope at her suggestion. If Diane was messing with him, that'd mean she wanted him too.

"She's gonna try to change you."

"She's not," he grinned. "That's impossible. She's enough of a brain to know that, don't you think?"

"Well…" She swerved into a parking spot, throwing them against the window a final time. "Don't say I didn't warn ya. C'mon."

They let themselves into the building and started up the two flights of stairs to her apartment. "Leave it to the Stick to live on the third story!" Carla complained, but Sam couldn't find much to complain about. The stairs were steep and so he proceeded slowly, letting Carla go ahead and unlock the door for them.

"Which key d'you think it is? Why the hell does she need five keys? She doesn't even have a car. Whaddaya think they unlock, her chastity belt?" Carla cackled at her own joke, but Sam – still only halfway up the stairs – wasn't listening. He felt Diane shift in his arms and stopped walking, watching as her eyes slowly opened. She stared back at him for a moment, looking bleary and disoriented, then extended a hand and touched his face.

"Sam," she said finally – not so much a question as an acknowledgment. He took a deep breath to steady himself, noticing that his heart rate had just about doubled.

"Uh, yeah," he said, barely hearing himself. Beneath his hands he felt the rhythm of her breathing. Her hand trailed down his neck and came to rest flat against his chest, never breaking eye contact, and he wondered if she'd noticed how fast his heart was beating. He knew she must be drunk still, that she probably didn't even know what she was doing, but something in her eyes seemed strangely cognizant, alert, searching…

"AY!" Carla stomped back to the staircase and squinted down at him in the dim light. "What the hell are you doing?"

This startled him so much that he almost dropped her. "Sorry," he called back, noticing Diane wince from the sudden loud noise. He tried to lower his voice in a way where Carla would still hear him. "She woke up."

"Hurry up," Carla said irritably. "I wanna get home before the stinking sunrise."

Sam glanced back to Diane, this time avoiding her eyes. "We're, uh, taking you home," he explained, but she did not seem to be paying attention; her eyes would droop shut for long intervals and then reopen suddenly, her body tensing in his arms. "You okay?" he said.

She nodded faintly. At the top of the landing he lowered her carefully to her feet, keeping an arm hooked around her waist for support. "Can you walk?"

With what seemed to be concentrated effort she staggered along at his side as he guided her into the apartment. Carla, he noticed, had vanished into the kitchen and was rifling through the fridge. He cast her a quizzical look, as if to say "What the hell?" and she grinned back.

"I got hungry waiting for _Sleeping Beauty_ to wake up after her bender, okay?"

"I'll just put her in bed," he said, "and then we can go."

"Yeah, I bet you will."

When he reached the bedroom he flipped on the lights, but she winced again. "No," she mumbled, and so he turned them back off. In near-darkness he led her to the bed and propped her up against a pillow.

"Hey," he said, sitting down at her side. "Do you, uh, wanna take off your shoes?"

She stared at him, without seeming to comprehend his question. Even with almost no light he could still make out blue eyes. "Um…" He looked away. "Never mind, I'll do it."

He took his time with the shoes, letting his hand graze against her legs more than once. _Jesus_, he thought, swallowing audibly, _it _was_ a good thing Carla came along._ His mind had begun to wander off in all sorts of unwanted directions, and in the moment it made him feel like kind of a creep – she was hardly conscious, after all. He remembered what Carla had said about how she was "screwing with him" and thought it wouldn't even matter one way or another, because this – this was obviously not some kind of scheme, and it was driving him crazier than maybe anything. If she was screwing with him, it didn't necessarily mean there was _intent_; it seemed to him that she must possess some kind of natural gift for it, if she could do it without being conscious. He finished with the shoes and began to rise.

"Sam," she said suddenly, reaching out and grabbing his wrist. He froze. "Is this a dream, or is it real?"

"It's… it's real."

"Oh, okay." She released his wrist and rolled onto her side. "I was wondering what Carla was doing here."

"I, uh…" He definitely, _definitely_ needed to get out of there before he did something stupid. "Well, goodnight Diane," he said, finally managing to stand. He felt his hand brush against something soft and reached for it. "What the—is this a bear or something?"

It turned out to be a giraffe.

"Oh, good." She reached out, waving her arm blindly, and he handed it to her. "Mr. Jammers," she said, pulling the giraffe close.

"Uh…" He started to laugh. "Boy, you're really drunk."

"G'nite Sam."

Her eyes fell shut again and he could tell that she had gone to sleep. _That's my girl,_ he thought – stupidly, because of course she wasn't his girl. For a moment he stood there, unable to make himself step away, until the door swung open and broke his trance.

"What're you doing now?"

He gave a start. "Shut up," he hissed at Carla.

"Are you watching her sleep? Jeez, what's gotten into you lately?"

"No," he said feebly. "I was just thinking, uh, you should probably help her get into her pajamas."

Carla made a face. "Who am I, her mother? You do it."

"I _really_ don't think I should do it."

"What's she need pajamas for? She's lucky we didn't just leave her behind a dumpster."

"Carla," he said. She scowled, but nonetheless stepped towards the dresser and threw it open.

"Jesus Christ, how many stuffed animals does she have in here?"

"Shut up," he said again. "She's sleeping."

"She won't wake up. These okay with you?" She held out an old pair of pajamas.

"What do I care?"

"I dunno, I thought you were acting head of the Bleach-bag Pajama Commission or something." She walked to the bed and wrenched Diane into a seated position, then turned back to him. "What, did you wanna watch? Does this get you off?"

"Oh." He jolted back to attention. "Right, sorry." He ducked out into the living room and sunk onto the couch, rubbing his temples with his thumbs. For whatever reason, the evening had left him feeling very ill-at-ease – had it been Carla's words or Diane or a combination of the two? When he'd been in that room it struck him how little control he had, over himself or the situation or whatever, he couldn't pinpoint it exactly. Sure, he wanted her – she was a woman, after all – but there was some indefinable quality within the wanting that made it seem different and put him on edge. Hell, maybe she was screwing with him. He wouldn't put it past her.

Another thought occurred to him, something that had been bothering him on and off and that Carla's comments had brought back to mind. When he got her into bed – if he ever managed to – what was going to happen afterwards? She'd have to leave, wouldn't she? That was how it always went with waitresses – they got fed up with his wandering eye – and he couldn't expect her to stick around much longer anyway. Surely she'd find a real job soon, and some new creep like Sumner who'd treat her the way she wanted to be treated and talk about all the boring stuff she liked to talk about. He knew it was probably for the best – because she was obnoxious as hell and always butting into his business and a lousy waitress to boot – so why didn't it feel like it was for the best? No matter how he spun it, he always wound up at the same place: he didn't want her to go.

What the hell _had_ gotten into him lately? He never used to waste time thinking about stuff; indeed, this was a quality he'd always worn as a badge of honor. He noticed a thick paperback sitting on the coffee table and picked it up – what better way to reassert his character than by boring his problems away? The book was called _Anna Karenina_; a few lines would probably be enough to remind himself that he wasn't the type to get hung up on a girl who read this crap for fun. He flipped it open at random, landing on one of the many dog-eared pages. One sentence, he saw, had been underlined in blue ink: "Rummaging in our souls," it read, "we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed."

"Oh Jesus," he groaned, slamming the book shut. "You're telling me?"

But it had not escaped his notice that on top of underlining the sentence, she had added to the margins a looping, blue question mark.


End file.
